


Three of Cups

by graveExcitement



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-12
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:28:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27167260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/graveExcitement/pseuds/graveExcitement
Summary: A cursed tarot deck gives the Archives crew a glimpse of their futures; Sasha investigates.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood & Sasha James & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist & Tim Stoker
Comments: 8
Kudos: 66
Collections: Fic In A Box





	Three of Cups

**Author's Note:**

  * For [liesmyth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/liesmyth/gifts).



Sasha was the first one to wake up, heart pounding, sprawled on the floor, surrounded by scattered papers and files. The familiar low droning sound of the Archive lights greeted her. Why had she fallen asleep in the Archives of all places? No, more accurately, why had she passed out? She wasn't Jon, prone to falling asleep at his desk, but even if she was, she wasn’t at her desk, she was lying in between the disorganized shelves of statements. She wasn't nearly sleep-deprived enough to fall asleep on the floor, so she must have passed out. 

"Guys?" she called out, sitting up slowly. Her head ached a bit, but she felt it carefully and found no lumps; hopefully that meant she hadn't hit it while passing out. "Tim? Martin?"

There was no response. The Archives were silent, which should be a relief, but was off-putting, since she expected to hear the sickening sound of the worms wriggling. The sound of…? Sasha shook her head, trying to focus, but the memory was already gone. She grimaced and used the shelves to pull herself up; thankfully, her legs seemed to be supporting her adequately, because she wasn't sure if the rickety shelving units could be trusted. She crept to the end of the aisle and peered into the main room.

Tim was at his desk, head pillowed on his arms, motionless. Martin was nowhere to be seen. There was otherwise no sign of anything out of the ordinary, which seemed wrong somehow, disorientating. Sasha jogged over to Tim's desk, his still form striking fear into her heart. Close up, however, she could see the rise and fall of his chest, and when she pressed two fingers to his neck, he seemed to have a normal pulse, though she was hardly a doctor. He wouldn't wake, though, no matter how much she shook him or how much noise she made. 

Her noisiness wasn't attracting any other attention, either, and it only took a quick tour of the Archives to find out why. Martin was lying on the breakroom floor, in the same unresponsive state as Tim; the kettle of tea on the countertop above had long since gone cold. Sasha took a moment to check the time; it was 8 pm, which meant the rest of the Institute had probably gone home. She had been out for several hours.

Jon was in his office, collapsed over his desk. In one hand he clutched a tape recorder; in the other, a large deck of cards. Sasha quickly checked that he was alive, but most of her attention was on the cards. Jon was holding the deck, but several had been laid out on his desk; tarot cards, she realized quickly. The one closest to her was the III of Swords, and it depicted three people in grinning theater masks, holding knives to each others’ throats. She looked closer and realized that they weren’t people at all, but mannequins, with lovingly detailed joints. She looked closer… 

_Writhing worms. Artefact Storage. A hypnotic table. "I see you."_

Sasha whirled around and squeezed her eyes shut. Two things were clear. One, the only unknown element in the Archives was that tarot deck, and so it was likely the cause, and interacting with it, even looking at it, could be dangerous. Two, she needed to write down the dream she'd just remembered, before she forgot it again.

She was in the middle of scribbling down every last detail when Tim jerked awake. "Jon," he gasped. "Basira?"

Sascha privately noted the unfamiliar name. "It's just me," she said. "Martin and Jon are still asleep." She'd left a note for Martin to find in case he woke up next, instructing him to call out or come find her when he woke, and left Jon's office door open so she could keep an eye on him. She'd have preferred to watch all three of them at once, but dragging Martin out from the breakroom wasn't feasible.

Tim turned towards her, and for a moment his stare was eerily blank. Then he rubbed his forehead, squinting. "Sasha?" he asked. "You are Sasha, right?"

A chill ran down her spine. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"I..." He frowned. "I'm not sure."

"Well, whatever you do remember, write it down quick, before you lose hold of it. Or make an audio recording; I'm sure there's a tape recorder around here somewhere — oh." There was one on her desk, actually, and it was already recording. "You can use this one, I guess."

Tim sat up. "You said Martin and Jon are asleep?"

She shrugged. "Asleep, unconscious, however you want to spin it. Primary suspect is a tarot deck Jon's got. It looked like he was doing a reading when it knocked us all out. And whatever dreams it gave you might be important, though possibly not trustworthy, so it would help if you recorded them, one way or another."

Tim shot the tape recorder an indecipherable look — Sasha wasn't sure if it was angry or confused — then closed his eyes. "It was the Unknowing," he began slowly. "We had to stop the Circus, me and Jon and... and..."

"Basira?" Sasha supplied, on a hunch.

"Basira!" he said. "And Daisy. We set the charges at a wax museum. Then there was dancing, and nothing was anything, and everyone was a Stranger. No. Jon was there, and... Grimaldi." He snarled. "I had something in my hand. A detonator. I squeezed, and it was over." 

She hummed. "Anything else of note?"

Tim thought for a moment. "I was angry," he said. "The whole time, I was so angry. At Jon, at the Circus. Enraged and ready to die, if it meant taking those bastards down." He frowned. "The Circus, I mean, not Jon. I was angry at him, but I didn't want him to die. Though since he was there when I set off the detonator, I guess, well." He rubbed his forehead. "God, this is fucked up. This seriously came from a fucking tarot deck?"

"Probably," she said. "I didn't want to interact with it in case that triggered it again, but it's the only thing I don't recognize in the Archives. Plus, the symbolism lines up: tarot is a tool of divination, and it appears to have shown us a glimpse of our future. Our future deaths, I'm guessing, or possible deaths — or that's what it wants us to think, at any rate."

"You think it might be lying?”

She shrugged. "My Artefact Storage instincts say not to blindly trust strange visions from cursed objects. But that doesn't mean they're not worth analyzing."

A groan echoed out from Jon's office, followed by a call of "Martin?" Sasha traded glances with Tim before crossing the room.

"Martin?" Jon called again plaintively as she reached the threshold. He was sitting up now, distress written plain on his face. 

"He's still asleep, sorry," she said. 

His eyes met hers. "Who are you?"

"Sasha James, Archival Assistant," she said immediately, then frowned. Why had she said it like that?

Jon blinked rapidly. "You're Sasha. The real Sasha. I... of course you are, I'm not sure why I..." He looked down, gaze falling on the cards. His brow furrowed.

"Don't!" she snapped. Jon jerked his head up, and she said more calmly, "Those tarot cards are likely what did this to us. Leave them, I'll explain more in the main room." 

He obediently stood, wincing, and followed her out of the room. He still held his tape recorder, but luckily he had left the deck on his desk. "Tim," he said, nodding. "Where's Martin?"

"Still asleep," she said again, "in the breakroom.”

Jon turned and made for the breakroom without another word. Sasha glanced at Tim, who raised an eyebrow at her. She shrugged and they followed Jon.

"Martin," said Jon. "Martin!" He dropped to his knees beside Martin's prone form, increasingly distraught.

Sasha sat next to him, and Tim followed suit beside her. "He's okay," she said, trying to sound soothing. "He's just dreaming. He'll wake up soon."

"Just dreaming," he repeated, and some of the tension in his body fell slack. "Right. What’s going on?"

Sasha launched into an explanation. "All four of us appear to have passed out at approximately the same time, for upwards of four hours. I was the first to wake, then Tim, then you, and Martin will be last. While we slept, Tim and I both had dreams of our possible future deaths. The dreams were vivid, but can be forgotten like regular dreams — I didn't remember mine until I saw the cards on your desk. Given that you were using the cards at the time you passed out, and they were the only other thing at all out of place, I concluded they were the most likely suspect. Which brings me to: where did that tarot deck come from?"

Jon squinted at nothing. "Statement of Audrey Waters," he said. "She came in with a story of a tarot deck that could actually predict the future, but every reading would take more out of you. Her friend, Rose Taylor, was the previous owner; she used the deck repeatedly, trying to prevent the deaths of herself and her loved ones. She was eventually found unconscious atop her cards; she thereafter slipped into a coma and passed away. Miss Waters brought it to us to tell her story and take the deck out of her hands. Hmm. I suppose it's similar in effect to statement #0030912, though that was a Leitner and the fear it engendered was more potent. Clearly End-aligned, in any case."

"Right, I remember Audrey, she came in around two," Tim said. "But — Jon, I know you're a skeptic, but _how_ did you take that woman's statement and then decide that a reading would be a good idea?"

"Especially if you'd already read another statement with a Leitner that did something similar!" Sasha added.

"I..." Jon opened and closed his mouth several times. "I don't remember ever encountering such a statement. I certainly had no knowledge of it when I made the decision to inspect the tarot deck myself, which I recognize now was quite foolish."

"You don't remember the statement that you _just_ rattled off the number and description of?" Tim asked. Jon shook his head.

"It's probably a side-effect of the dreams," Sasha decided. "Some knowledge and memory seems to carry over. Tim asked for a Basira when he woke up — I'm guessing you don't know a Basira?" she asked Tim, and he shook his head. "This is good, though. If we can find that statement, that makes the dreams more credible. It's something concrete we can verify. Speaking of, you should probably record your dream, Jon, before you forget it."

Jon set his tape recorder on the floor beside him and reached to hit 'record,' but it was already recording. He blinked at it before turning to stare off into the distance. "The door," he murmured. "We closed the door. It wasn't the same as the world before, but it was better than the Fears' world. Beholding's world. But without the fear, without the Eye, I withered away. I grew sick, dizzy, confused. I didn't know anything by the end, I barely knew who I was. On my better days I remembered enough to be afraid of what was happening to me. But..." He looked down. "Martin was there. I always Knew him, and he took care of me, even though I knew how painful it was for him to watch me waste away. The last thing I remember is him holding my hand."

The room was quiet for a minute. "At least it was peaceful?" Tim tried.

"It also raises a number of questions," Sasha said. "Tim and I saw the day of our deaths, but you saw more than that — was it because your death was a more drawn-out affair, or did you get to see more because you were the one to do the reading?"

Jon opened his mouth to reply, but below them Martin stirred. "Jon?" he whispered.

"I'm here," Jon said. 

"Good to see you back with us, bud," said Tim.

Martin struggled upwards, propping himself up on one arm and rubbing the sleep from his eyes with the other. "Why am I on the floor?"

Sasha snorted. "Jon used a cursed tarot deck, and only he and Tim were lucky enough to be sitting down when it knocked us all out."

He looked at her, brow furrowed, and Sasha saw the lack of recognition in his face. She waited a moment, but he didn’t seem like he was either going to remember her or ask. "It's me, Sasha. Don't worry, not recognizing me seems to be par for the course."

"What?" said Tim, alarmed.

She rolled her eyes. "Not now. I have a theory, but first, Martin, what do you remember of your dream?"

"My dream?" Martin repeated. “I was alone.”

She waited a moment to see if he would elaborate, then prodded, “Anything else?”

“I was completely, utterly alone,” he whispered. “It swallowed me up.”

“Martin,” Jon said, taking his hand, “I’m so sorry.”

He shook his head. “It’s not your fault.”

“I left you alone, I left you to Forsaken. I should have known…”

“It’s not your _fault_ , Jon,” Martin insisted. “Please. Don’t try to shoulder the blame for this. You always…” He trailed off. “Um. What are we doing? Are we seriously arguing about something that never actually happened?”

Jon blinked, taken aback. “Apparently. You’re right, that is odd. I suppose this is more evidence for Sasha’s bleedover idea.” 

“No offence, mate, but you’ve been weird since you woke up,” Tim said. 

“If we consider Jon the ‘primary user’ of the deck, it would make sense that he would experience stronger effects than the rest of us,” said Sasha. “What’s Forsaken?”

“I’m not sure,” said Jon. “You said before that you have a theory: what is it?”

She flipped through her notes, trying to organize her thoughts. “It’s still too soon to conclude that the visions are accurate. However, there are elements of continuity between the dreams which indicate that, rather than being separate and individual predictions, they form a single narrative. One future, which we each saw a slice of, in the order of our deaths.”

“Hold on,” said Tim. “Jon _blew up_ in my dream —”

“What?” said both Jon and Martin.

“— and he obviously didn’t dream the same thing, so doesn’t that point to different predictions?”

“The building exploded, and you died,” said Sasha. “That doesn’t necessarily mean Jon died. Maybe he was injured badly but survived; that might explain the health problems he had in his dream.”

Tim shook his head, frowning. “No one could survive that.”

Jon cleared his throat. “While I don’t know the details, surviving an explosion when Tim did not does seem improbable. However, I presume you have other evidence?”

She leaned forward. “The primary evidence is me. I was the first to wake up; I was also the first to die. All of you were alive in my dream, and I wasn’t in any of yours. But it goes further than that: all of you had trouble recognizing me when you first woke up. Jon even asked who I was. 'Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.' The creature in the table, the thing that killed me, it must have done something to your memories of me, what I looked like. The point is that it’s consistent across all three of you, which indicates that the same thing happened to me in each of your futures.”

“Meaning it’s likely the same future,” Jon concluded.

“Exactly.”

“Okay, so, what do we do about it?” said Martin.

“First off, based on Audrey Waters’ statement, none of us should ever touch that tarot deck again. Even if its visions are accurate, repeated usage is deadly,” Sasha said. 

Tim snorted. “No objections here.”

“I must admit I am curious,” Jon said. “I know it’s a bad idea! It was just, in my dream I knew so much, at least before it slipped away from me. If the information is accurate, and if I could remember more of it afterwards… However,” he hastened to add, “I am aware that this is precisely the train of thought that could doom me, and I don’t want to put any of you at risk either. I, I’ve done enough of that already.”

“Why did it affect all of us?” Martin asked. “Since Jon was the one who actually used it.”

“Great question,” said Tim, “but we’re not using it again, so hopefully we don’t need to worry about it. Right, boss?” Jon inclined his head.

“As for our next steps,” Sasha said, ticking items off on her fingers as she went, “we need to compile our dream accounts in a more easily referenced format, have Artefact Storage pick up the tarot deck, search for the statement Jon referenced earlier, search for anything else that can verify the dreams —”

“Do we need to do any of that _tonight?”_ Tim interrupted.

She stopped, words tangled in her throat, and then took a moment to really look at him, at all of them. Tim looked tense, stressed. In Jon she saw a mirror of her determination, her need to analyze, but she also saw exhaustion. And Martin, hunched against the cabinet behind him, looked small and sad.

“No,” she said. “It’s late, Artefact Storage can’t even take it until tomorrow morning anyways. We can just lock Jon’s office and, I don’t know, put up a warning post-it or something. We’ve already gotten the bulk of the data, the rest is just follow-up, and that can wait.”

“Right then,” Tim said. “You three are coming back to my place, and we’ll have ourselves a proper Archives sleepover.”

“I’m not sure…” Jon stammered.

“Nope, you’re coming too,” he said. “You didn’t get the full blast of a spooky tarot deck just for me to let you go home and mope alone.”

Jon sputtered, but then glanced at Martin, who was hesitantly smiling, and the fight went out of him. “Very well,” he conceded. “I’ll go fetch my things and lock up my office, shall I?” He stood, grimacing (none of their backs would be thanking them for extended time spent on the floor, Sasha thought wryly) and headed for the door.

“Be careful!” she called after him. 

He glanced back. “Based on Miss Waters’ statement, it’s the act of doing a reading that triggers the effect, not merely looking at the cards. But I will.” He gave her a solemn nod and left. It wasn’t how Jon of this morning would have responded, Sasha mused. That Jon would have been stiff, skeptical, convinced he was right. This Jon acknowledged her concern, and took it seriously. She wondered how much of that was the bleedover effect, and how much was that Jon could not deny that skepticism had been the wrong attitude to take with this statement. Either way, it was nice to be trusted. 

The three assistants sat there for a minute, before Tim said, “Alright, we should pack up too. Does this count for overtime, do you think?” 

“Well, we weren’t exactly working,” Martin pointed out.

“This _is_ the Magnus Institute,” said Sasha. “Receiving and interpreting visions of our dooms _ought_ to be billable hours.”

All three of them burst into laughter, born more from relief and camaraderie than actual humor. Warmth filled Sasha, to have put smiles back on Martin and Tim’s faces, where they belonged.

Later, they would donate the tarot deck to Artefact Storage, complete with a copy of Audrey Waters’ statement and their own notes on the effects; later, they would search the Archives top to bottom for statement #0030912, and eventually find it. Later, Jon would ask Sasha and Tim what exactly they’d dreamed, and ask Sonja in Artefact Storage whether they had a table with a hypnotic web pattern (they did not; not yet.) Later, the team would scour the Archives for information on Jane Prentiss, things that could alter memories, paranormal circuses, and loneliness.

But for tonight, they squeezed onto Tim’s couch, which barely fit all four of them, and watched bad movies, which Jon criticized at length. Tim made curry, and Sasha mixed drinks, and in the wee hours of the morning they sprawled across the blankets Tim had spread out across his living room floor.

Sasha was the last one awake, the boys snoring softly. Her mind kept picking over the day’s events, and eventually she gave up on attempts to sleep and sat up, leaning against the couch. If her dream was accurate — and though they had yet to verify it, her instincts said it was — it said poor things about her life expectancy, and the safety of the Archives in general. Was it set in stone? Could the future be changed? If they could avert the dreams’ future, she might well owe her life to Jon’s recklessness. That certainly wasn’t something she’d expected when she transferred to the Archives.

She could quit, she supposed. It could literally save her life. But something in her rebelled at the idea; tonight the Archive crew felt like a team, maybe for the first time since they had been transferred there. She didn’t want to leave them behind. And beyond that, she wanted to know more. It probably said something about her that the horrors in their possible future were more tantalizing than terrifying, though she still remembered the adrenaline, the dread, the final terror, of her dream.

“Sasha?” a voice murmured. It was Tim, squinting up at her. “Y’gonna sleep?” She must have hesitated too long, because he put a hand on her arm and said, “You know we’re not gonna forget you, right? We won’t let that happen.”

 _That might not be up to you,_ part of her thought, but she felt warmer anyway. “I know,” she whispered, and let Tim tug her back down to the floor. He wrapped an arm around her, and she curled into him. She expected her mind to return to picking over the dreams, but Tim’s warmth and solidity surrounded her, and she drifted off, secure in his arms.

**Author's Note:**

> Three of Cups: friendship, camaraderie, collaboration. The card Sasha looks at, the Three of Swords, can represent betrayal and heartbreak, so I felt it worked for a Stranger card.


End file.
